Woman of Note, Interview With Nadine Gordimer: "I don't think happiness is possible without freedom"

World War II began when you were in your teens. How do you recall learning about the war? How did you receive news about the war?

Nadine Gordimer: On the radio, of course. We didn't have television. Radio, newspapers, and of course, letters and telephone calls to people overseas. And all of us, we girls, had our boyfriends up in the Middle East writing to us. Of course they couldn't write about what they were experiencing, but we saw in the papers that there was this battle and that battle. And in their letters, even though they were censored, they could say, "I've just come back from blah, blah, blah..." whatever it was.

How did you become interested in writing for publication? Was there a particular moment that first piqued your interest in writing professionally?

Nadine Gordimer: No, no, no. That is a sort of decision people make when they go for a regular career, not one like writing.

How should I put it? I always compare a writer with an opera singer. If you're going to be an opera singer, you are born with certain vocal chords, which I imagine you don't have and I certainly don't have. Unless you have that, you can go to all the voice training in the world, you're not going to land up at La Scala. But if you have it, then you can develop it. Now if you're going to be a writer, we have to go back to what I said before, you are born with certain characteristics. First of all, tremendous sense of observation, as I say, and a great curiosity about life. You're not prepared to take all the answers. You know, "If you're a good girl, you'll go to heaven," and "God is looking after you," and this, that and the other, and "You must listen to your teacher," and so on and so forth. So an independent mind is like having these special chords if you're going to be an opera singer. That's really the beginning of it.

Did you already think that you would make a living by your writing, when you had that first story published at 15?

Nadine Gordimer: How could I? I had no idea how I was going to make a living. Of course it was presumed in the circles in which I lived that when you finished school you would be a typist, or indeed, if I had gone on dancing, I might have been a dancing teacher of children. And of course you got married and then you didn't work. That was the end of your working career. There were very few women doctors, and I didn't know a single woman lawyer where I lived. This all was not in our milieu.

What about university, did your parents encourage you?

Nadine Gordimer: No, not at all.

I decided much later when I was about 19, and when I was already publishing here and there, and living at home and eating food provided by my father and so on, that I wanted to go to university. So I went to the University of Witwatersrand as an occasional student for one year, no degree, and then left. And of course it was interesting because it was just after the war, and there was this big division. I was like the people who had come back from the war, the soldiers, who then were, you know, adult, and in my case I found that I had read far more than either they had — because they hadn't had the opportunity — and also the younger ones who'd just come from school. So what they recommended reading, I had already done for my own pleasure and my own enlightenment. But what I did learn that year there was -- indeed through one good lecturer -- was to become, as I say, very self-critical. Not just to think that whatever I had written was just what I wanted to say, but to see how it could be critical that it didn't. I then began to see where I was failing.

Looking back, did you ever know why your parents didn't encourage you to go to university?

Nadine Gordimer: No, no, I haven't thought about it. I don't dwell on my childhood. Too many people live on their crummy childhood. You must outgrow it.

Do you have other memories of witnessing racism, of seeing something you knew was wrong?

Nadine Gordimer: No. I've told you about that time of the raid on Letty, our house maid or whatever she was. I know what we called it at the time, I thought "servant" was the word.

Your first contacts with black South Africans were as servants. When did you form your first relationships with black South Africans as comrades, fellow writers, fellow artists?

Nadine Gordimer: I would say it began through the common ground of young writers, artists, actors.

When I was... that year I talked about at university. The University of Witwatersrand was a white university, but there were certain occasions when there was a subject that was not taught at the black university, and here and there a black student would be accepted, usually a post-graduate. Now through somebody there -- and there were people connected who came back from the war, who were very against the result of what they had fought for, freedom, and then you come back to another fascist country. You've just defeated one, now you come back to one which is your own. And one of my first friends, black friends, was the wonderful writer, Es'kia Mphahlele — Zeke, as he was known then. Zeke and I met, I don't quite remember how, and we were both young writers, just wanting to teach ourselves how to write, and we started to exchange. He'd show me his story and I'd show him mine. Of course, his position was very different from mine, because he was black, and it was then that I began, along with others, to — I won't say "defy," that sounds... to "ignore," which is a very strong form of defiance, the edict that black and white mustn't mix. So mixed parties, going to a shebeen together and so on, that really started for me then. And then I met many others, and especially people also in the theater. A wonderful writer called Todd Matshikiza and a number of others whose names probably wouldn't mean anything to you.

We'd like to ask about your memories of Sophiatown. Do you remember the day of the relocation?

Nadine Gordimer: Oh, you mean when they took people out of Sophiatown? Oh, I remember the day, yes. I wasn't there, but I had friends who lost their homes, my black friends. So it was something that one could never really forget. And of course then we realized, because it was right next door, so to speak, that it was happening all over, that people were having their houses bulldozed.

Could you tell us about Bettie du Toit? She was your friend, wasn't she?

Nadine Gordimer: Yes, a great friend. The closest woman friend I've ever had, quite wonderful. From her too, I think I received a political education. She was of solid Afrikaans stock, because that's a Huguenot name, "du Toit." But here we call it "Du-toy," because it got naturally, I don't know, Afrikanerized. Bettie was a member of the Communist Party. She had been illegally married — I mean married somewhere else and came back to live here — to an Indian of the prominent Cachalia family. She worked in trade unions. She worked with Albie's father, Solly Sachs, and the garment workers union, and this one and that one. Anyway, this was a world unknown to me with my little sheltered life. She was, of course, also white, and she had been totally disowned by all her family because she was a traitor. We became great friends, both my husband and I, really close to her because I happened to meet her as a young divorced woman. My first marriage was a failure.

I met Bettie du Toit and my future husband then, Reinhold Cassirer, on the same day in somebody's house, yes. And the three of us were very great friends, and both Reinhold and I felt she was our guru in many ways, because she was right in the thick of the whole thing. Now of course, the time came when she was detained, she was in detention. Her family had abandoned her. All her comrades in the movement, in the ANC and the South African Communist Party, dare not come forward and say, "We want to visit her." You were supposed to have family visits only. Anyway, it was no great courage on my part, it was just the obvious thing to do. I went to the police, you had to go, and said I'm her sister and I wanted to see her. So they said, "But you've got a different name." I said, "Of course I'm married now." So I got permission to see her, and that meant I could go to the women's section of the Old Fort, which is now the famous Constitution Hill complex, part of that. Albie would have talked about it. So I saw the inside of a prison for the first time. And to see your friend there is quite extraordinary, all part of your education if you lived here. On a visit then, I would be sitting here, there would a heavy grill in front of me. She'd be brought in and she'd sit on the other side, and then we would talk through this with two warders looking at their watches and so on. But I think it was very fortunate for me that I had this experience. It made me understand the realities of where we were living. And so my involvement with and adherence to the liberation movement started.

Why was she detained?

Nadine Gordimer: She was detained for all her activities, for her activities within the ANC, the meetings. The Umkhonto (armed wing of the ANC) hadn't been formed yet, but there were many other things. And as I said, she used her trade union experience as well to speak against the apartheid regime and so on.

Could you take us up to March 1960 and the Sharpeville Massacre? What do you remember?

Nadine Gordimer: Everything. We didn't have TV, but we did have the newspapers and we did have the radio, with some censorship, but still. And of course, one had friends. I certainly had friends among journalists and among political activists who were back and forth. So one was very well informed. But it was a remarkable thing. It was tragic, the killing of that boy. But the courage, it was the children who really gave the impetus to their elders to take the struggle further. As Chief Luthuli said, who was in Congress, very much a leader until the youth group with Nelson and others took over. He said once in a speech, I've never forgotten it, "We are tired of knocking on the back door." So this was the end of knocking on the back door.

In the 1960s, the liberation movement in South Africa became an armed struggle. There were bombings and assassinations. Was there ever a time when you considered arming yourself?

Nadine Gordimer: No, no, no, never. We're talking about the height of apartheid, when indeed I gave evidence for the defense in a big treason trial. My great friend, the wonderful, great lawyer, George Bizos, Nelson Mandela's lawyer, said to me, "Look, please, when you get out of your car, have a look," because of what happened to Albie Sachs. Albie of course was a great figure in the liberation, which I was not. But now, once having given this kind of evidence in a big court case, George thought that there might be some danger. And I thought, "Good God, how ridiculous. Who's going to?" That was really the only... and then there were other times. You know, I feel my own contribution, it was never enough, but my husband, Reinhold Cassirer and I, we hid people. We did all sorts of things.

You mentioned Nelson Mandela. Did you meet him before his arrest in 1962?

Nadine Gordimer: Oh, yes indeed. I was introduced to him, my great good fortune, by the English journalist, editor of Drum, Anthony Sampson, who was introduced to my husband and me and who became an intimate of the house, a great friend. He was reporting that first trial in the Drill Hall here, and he took me along, and in the recess I met Nelson Mandela, and so after that I was fortunate enough indeed to get to know him.

Did you do any writing for Drum?

Nadine Gordimer: I never wrote anything for Drum. No. We were friends. Drum was indeed, quite rightly, to encourage writing among urban blacks. It would have been presumptuous of me to write for Drum.

Do you remember that first meeting with Mandela? What did you talk about?

Nadine Gordimer: Oh, how do I remember! Well, we talked politics, of course. What else would we talk about?

How soon did you see him after his release from prison in 1990?

Nadine Gordimer: Since his release? Well, I saw him very soon, indeed,

I was there the day when he came out, saw him come out of the prison, yes. I was with Anthony Sampson, and then I saw him alone after that. When he was in prison, indeed, among the people he asked to see, he asked to see me. And I applied and I was refused. They wouldn't let me see him on the island. But I was one among a number of people who were refused. Indeed, oddly enough, somebody had smuggled in Burger's Daughter, and he read Burger's Daughter and then he asked to see me. So I was absolutely delighted and was ready to hop on a plane and go to Cape Town and go to the island but, as I say, I had to apply and the answer was no.

Were you given an explanation?

Nadine Gordimer: No. You weren't entitled to one.

So when he was released, you saw him right there at the gate.

Nadine Gordimer: Yes. And when the negotiations were going on, he and some other comrades, it was useful for them to have a house where they could meet quietly, so they came here.

They came here, to this house?

Nadine Gordimer: Yes.

Did you really just talk politics with Mandela?

Nadine Gordimer: Oh, we talked all sorts of things. He's a very lovely man and Nelson has many interests.

Can you tell me some of the topics that you talked about?

Nadine Gordimer: Oh well, he talked about his childhood and youth. But we talked mostly about, you know, politics and what was going on, yes.

Have you ever had a real disappointment in your career? Has there been an event or a milestone that you found disappointing?

Nadine Gordimer: Frankly, no, because first of all I would never think of milestones. I have been surprised that this book got more attention and has lived longer than that. And I haven't always agreed with it. I thought, "Now why is that one favored?" For instance, a book of mine called July's People never dies and is taught in schools and so on. But I suppose it has certain reasons, because it was the only novel I've written which had something frankly prophetic in it. It was written at a time when we were like the swine, waiting to throw ourselves over the precipice (Luke, 8:33) into a terrible civil war. And it could so easily have happened. So what is told in a personal way, in a family, in microcosm, what happens in that book seems to catch people so that they would think, I'm now presuming, "Oh my God, this so very nearly happened to us." So it's taught in schools all the time, which amazes me too. Or perhaps it's good, because it reminds them what they've come from, what their parents lived in.

Why did it surprise you that July's People seems to have legs, as it does?

Nadine Gordimer: Well, I would have thought Burger's Daughter or The Conservationist. But you see The Conservationist, I haven't got a crystal ball, but the question of land has come up. So that now-old book was about land. Six feet, the grave, was all that a black man had. But that goes way back to my second book of stories, which was called Six Feet of the Country, and also was the matter of a burial of a black man.

Was there a time in your career when you felt you could say you were a success as a writer?

Nadine Gordimer: I can't understand why anyone should look at themselves in this way. Then I suppose I should have said the climax of it would be the Nobel Prize. When I think of the Nobel Prize, it was very wonderful indeed. But when I think of what we talked about before, that first story in an adult paper, arising out of the raid on the house. I was 15 years old, I pick up the paper... That was a tremendous thrill. When you grow older and you're fortunate enough to have good experiences with your work, it wouldn't have quite the impact that had, when I was 15.

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Woman of Note, Interview With Nadine Gordimer: "I don't think happiness is possible without freedom"

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